Recognising, stopping, and fixing the overwhelm that threatens to ruin your team
Dig yourself out of the black hole of leadership entropy
There comes a time as a manager or team leader when you realise you are just digging yourself and/or your team further and further into a black hole of poor performance and bad culture.
Your team is miserable. Nobody is doing their best work. Every day feels like a struggle. Maybe your company is even at risk.
So many things are wrong or at least feel wrong that you begin to wonder if it’s even possible to get the team back on track and improve not only performance but the culture and atmosphere.
Leaders tend to do one of two things in these circumstances:
- We “play ostrich” pretending everything is fine and continue to grind along in the same gear hoping things will magically improve (they won’t)
- We read every one of the top ten management books on Amazon and immediately try to implement each and everyone of the tricks, tips, and processes suggested, hoping one of them magically starts to solve the myriad of problems we are facing (they might, but you won’t know which one or why exactly)
I’ve turned around several highly dysfunctional, historically mis-managed, large teams. I know first hand the pitfalls of both of these choices and all their variations.
The first thing that matters in a situation like this is to stop the slide down into the deep, dark hole of the poor management of poor performance. The #1 reason for this is overwhelm.
… “overwhelm” can be described as the numb feeling of desperation that we experience when [everything] seems to be spinning out of control [all at once].
It’s time to shake off the numb feeling and take action.
Get your nails out as you slide down the muddy walls of that hole and dig in. Engage your knees, use your toes- whatever it takes to put on the brakes as desperately as you can and stop the slide.
You may think that’s easier said than done; no one chooses to be overwhelmed, it just happens, right?
Once you learn to see the signs, you can apply the brakes and get a grip before things get further out of hand. Each time you can spot the slide earlier and earlier.
The signs of overwhelm in management
Here are some signs that you will start to notice early (once you’ve learned to pay attention) if your team’s performance or your own management attempts are getting overcome by events.
When you see these, it’s time to start digging in, stop, and take stock:
- You start to avoid your team in little ways, waiting until no one is at the coffee pot, or not leaving the bathroom stall until you hear that person finish washing their hands and close the close behind them.
- You start to avoid your team in BIG ways: You cancel meetings, especially one to ones with staff, and run from the issues because you don’t know the answers to the questions your team have for you. You don’t want to say “I don’t know” or admit there are problems so you hide.
- You cancel time for planning and reflection because you are so busy fighting fires that you think you can’t afford the ‘luxury’ of time away from the problems (big red flag!).
- Or, you pile on the meetings hoping that “talking shop” will help you identify the causes and get some help in fixing them. This is actually another type of avoidance, but one that makes you feel as if you are taking action when you are really just wasting time. You and everyone else are spending so much time in meetings and not doing the work to apply the solutions that the problems are getting worse.
- You dread coming in each day.
- You try anything and everything, in a mad sort of flailing attempt to make it turn around. For instance, you start a new Monday morning scrum, but also a Friday afternoon pizza and beer party, a Wednesday lunchtime lunch-n-learn session, a Tuesday complaints amnesty, and a Thursday bring-your-dog-to-work day- all in the same week, hoping one of them will make things improve.
- You become paralysed and do nothing. You walk around in a fog. You become incapable of making decisions. Customers and good staff leave, contracts fall apart. Your team stops coming to you for advice, guidance, or decisions. Entropy sets in- the black hole of doom!
You will continue to fail in leading your team to better performance and a better work day if you ignore any one of these signs.
But don’t worry. All is not lost!
Stopping the slide, starting the climb
The very first thing you do is congratulate yourself for recognising that this is happening.
Without this recognition, all would indeed be lost.
Then, take a deep breath and carve out some time. This is non-negotiable.
It may have to be from midnight to 2 a.m. (not ideal) or on a Sunday afternoon, but you must have time away from the office, the team, the decisions, the disasters- to get a clear view to determine next actions.
This distance is essential for getting the first steps right. Without it, the whole mess will be too close to your nose and the panic is likely to prevent you from making sound judgements and decisions at this stage. You are most likely to start flailing wastefully again.
It’s time to take stock of where you are.
Your goal here is to:
- Articulate a vision about where you want to take the company and the team. You do this first. Otherwise it is difficult to know which problems are your most pressing. Everything seems urgent and important when you’re in The Hole. Setting out your vision helps you prioritise.
- Analyse what your key problems are. Once you have set out your vision this becomes much easier. Your key problems are the main two or three things that are stopping you from moving toward your vision. Continually missing your sales target? No wonder, you don’t have anyone with the right calibre of business development skills. Can’t get that mailing list to grow? The call to action on your website is rubbish, and you don’t have a designer to make it work better.
- Prioritise those problems. Depending on how long you’ve been in the hole, your list of barriers between you and your vision could be quite long! You can’t do everything at once. If you try, you will remain in The Hole of Doom that is overwhelm. What’s most important? If sales are poor you can’t pay to bring on that new designer, perhaps. Always check back in with your vision, and look again at your order of priorities. Then…
- Choose next action! Not just any action, but NEXT action. One foot in front of the other is the difference between overwhelm and progress climbing out of the hole. As soon as you try to do too many things at once, the entropy returns, the fog of inaction sets in as you struggle to decide what to do next, and back down you slide.
- Keep going. Enlist your team. Ask for help. Show some strong leadership through humility and transparency. You will soon be scrambling over the edge of that dark hole and into the light of improving performance and a happier team.
Digging your head into the sand, digging yourself further into the poor performance hole, or digging your way through too many MBA-style models and manuals for the next great quick fix will take you and your team further and further into the black hole of doom.
Once you’ve recognised this is happening, stop the line, take stock, revisit your vision, prioritise problems, take action.
The confidence boost alone in doing these first simple things will take you a long way out of the hole. Your team will see you taking action, get on board, and get performance back on track.
My first book, Becoming a Fearless Leader: A simple guide to taking control and building happy, productive, highly-performing teams is out now. You can find access to a free pdf workbook that accompanies it on my website. If you do read my book, I would love to hear your comments.
I write about my leadership and management experience of 20+ years, and all I have learned as a founder of a tech startup as a non-techie, over-40 female with no entrepreneurial experience. You can see more here.
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